Gallup: ObamaCare still viewed negatively by majority

posted at 4:11 pm on February 5, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Well, Nancy Pelosi promised that we wouldn’t know all of the marvels of ObamaCare until it passed. We’re now four solid months into its rollout, and … it’s still as unpopular as ever, according to Gallup:

President Barack Obama defended his signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, before Congress and the nation last week in his State of the Union address, but public opinion toward the law is little changed since November. Americans are still more likely to disapprove (51%) than approve (41%) of the law.

The latest results, from a Gallup poll conducted Jan. 31-Feb. 1, show that even though many provisions of the law are now in effect, Americans’ views of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare,” still tilt negative.

For the most part, Americans haven’t seen much impact, with 64% saying that the law has had no effect – down slightly from 69% in December. Another 19% say that it has hurt their families, which combine up for 83%, or about the level of people who already had insurance (85% in 2009). Only 13% say the law has helped their families, which is up four points from December’s 9%, but that shift is in the margin of error for the survey, too. Only 24% believe it will help their families “in the long run,” with 37% believing it will be a net negative. Those aren’t numbers that point to a big rebound in confidence for ObamaCare, or the politicians who pushed it.

“I was thinking at that time, this doesn’t sound right at all,” Guillory said.

The next time he got a call, Guillory began to question the person on the other end.

“I told them, ‘I tried to contact y’all a couple times and this is not a legitimate number.’ They hung up immediately,” Guillory explained.

That led to a flood concerns for Guillory, who now wondered how the mystery person got his personal information. He feels it has to be connected to signing up for insurance on HealthCare.gov.

“Has to be. There’s no other way for those people to have known that I was looking for insurance,” Guillory said.

The other victim in this case is a woman from Virginia Beach, who prefers not to be identified. It was her phone number that popped up on Guillory’s caller ID, but she wasn’t making the calls. Her number also appeared on the caller ID of others and many called her with similar concerns.

She says the mystery caller somehow made the calls appear as if they were coming from her cell number.

“That’s when I learned that my number had been spoofed, and I had no idea what that even was,” she says.

CMS media director Aaron Albright released this statement after the segment aired:

When consumers fill out their online Marketplace applications, they can trust that the information that they are providing is protected by stringent security standards. To date, there have been no successful security attacks on healthcare.gov and no person or group has maliciously accessed personally identifiable information from the site…Security testing is conducted on an ongoing basis using industry best practices to appropriately safeguard consumers’ personal information. The security of the system is also monitored by sensors and other tools to deter and prevent any unauthorized access.

The claim that no successful hacks have occurred can only be made, cybersecurity expert David Kennedy said two weeks ago, because CMS and HHS have no systems in place to detect them. Kennedy managed to access that data very easily, and ended up seeing tens of thousands of records in just a few minutes’ work, without even bothering to hack the site. And if it’s that easy to find, then we may as well just consider them hacked already — as if we’d entered the data in Sochi.

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Since heaping scorn on Obamacare for destroying 2.3 million jobs in the next 10 years is not part of the MSM narrative (which Hot Air closely adheres to) …

… and tomorrow we will welcome MANY new GOPe operatives in an open enrollment well timed to support the GOPe House Leadership’s complete lack of intelligence and leadership …

… what difference, at this point, does it make on how Obamacare is polling?

You’ve aligned Hot Air with the GOPe establishment, Ed
(i.e. pro-immigration reform, abandonment of the Tea Party when attacked by the GOPe Donor Class and the futility of debt ceiling as a political lever less, God forbid, the Obama administration might choose to default)

The GOPe Donor ClassLOVES Obamacare, Ed – it is going to make them a LOT of money – whether it fails or not.

Employers aren’t going to wait that long to renew/cancel policies. Their clock is not Obama’s clock.

NotCoach on February 5, 2014 at 4:37 PM

…politburo press time…they are on Obama’s sun dial time…they don’t want to report it…meanwhile those who try are having all their pertinent information stolen…(and Target thought THEY had a problem!)…just wait till it affects individual families!…the media is destroying this country…shit is slowly hitting the fan…and it’s all over their head!…who will hold the press liable?

Kennedy managed to access that data very easily, and ended up seeing tens of thousands of records in just a few minutes’ work, without even bothering to hack the site. And if it’s that easy to find, then we may as well just consider them hacked already

US intelligence officials have complained the site is larded up with malware placed there by some nice folks from Belarus. Reported in the Washington Free Beacon.

Since heaping scorn on Obamacare for destroying 2.3 million jobs in the next 10 years is not part of the MSM narrative (which Hot Air closely adheres to) …

… and tomorrow we will welcome MANY new GOPe operatives in an open enrollment well timed to support the GOPe House Leadership’s complete lack of intelligence and leadership …

… what difference, at this point, does it make on how Obamacare is polling?

You’ve aligned Hot Air with the GOPe establishment, Ed
(i.e. pro-immigration reform, abandonment of the Tea Party when attacked by the GOPe Donor Class and the futility of debt ceiling as a political lever less, God forbid, the Obama administration might choose to default)

The GOPe Donor Class LOVES Obamacare, Ed – it is going to make them a LOT of money – whether it fails or not.

PolAgnostic on February 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM

Since the country is just going to vote for Hillary anyway, more of the same…..

Mark me down for the same boat. What difference does the polling make?

Why do the insurance company’s need a bailout?Everyone will soon have nothing but a catastrophic health insurance on a level of a dental plan.I have never seen a dental plan that covers over $1000.You get 1 or 2 free check ups a year where they tell you how bad your teeth are.If you need a cap or crown the $1000 is gone and you’re own your own.The new standard health plan deductibles and copays are sky high.Until those are met you have nothing.The company’s won’t be paying out anything in most cases.The hospitals need to build ER’s the size of the Astrodome.There will be more uninsured in a year or 2 than before this law began.